Many people use electronic document preparation systems to help prepare important documents electronically. For example, each year millions of people use electronic document preparation systems customized for various particular fields, such as for tax, i.e. electronic tax return preparation systems, to help prepare and file their tax returns. Typically, electronic document preparation systems receive user information from a user and then automatically populate the various fields in electronic versions of government tax forms. Electronic tax return preparation systems represent a potentially flexible, highly accessible, and affordable source of tax return preparation assistance for customers. However, processes that enable the electronic tax return preparation systems to determine underlying relations between the various fields and automatically determine and populate various data fields of the tax forms typically utilize large amounts of computing system resources and human resources.
For instance, using an electronic tax return preparation system as an example, due to changes in tax laws, or due to updates in government tax rules, tax forms can change from year to year, or even multiple times in a same year. If a physical or electronic tax form required by a governmental entity is updated, or a new tax form is introduced, it is typically very difficult to efficiently update electronic tax return preparation systems to correctly determine tax data appropriate for and populate the various fields of the new or changed tax forms with required values. Tax forms are written by humans for human review, interpretation and understanding. A particular line of an updated tax form may have text describing a requirement of an input according to one or more functions that use line item values from other lines of the updated tax form and/or line item values from other tax related forms or worksheets. These functions range from very simple to very complex, and are often hard enough to interpret by the humans the text of the various lines was written for, and are thus even much more burdensome when a computing system is introduced in the form of a tax preparation system that is configured to prepare and/or file electronic versions of the new or updated tax forms.
Updating an electronic document preparation system, such as an electronic tax return preparation system, often includes utilizing a combination of tax or other experts to interpret the tax forms consistent with the intent of the humans who prepared the text of the tax forms, software and system engineers who consult with the experts to understand and develop the human expert view of individual forms, and large amounts of computing resources, to develop, code, and incorporate the new functions and forms into the electronic document preparation system.
Interaction that is required between the experts, software and system engineers can lead to significant software release delays and incur great expense in releasing an updated version of the electronic document preparation system. These delays and expenses are then passed on to customers of the electronic document preparation system who have deadlines to file documents associated with the new or updated forms. Furthermore, because humans are inherently error prone, already-existing processes for updating electronic documents can introduce significant inaccuracies into the functions and processes of the electronic document preparation system.
These expenses, delays, and inaccuracies can have an adverse impact on the implementation and use of traditional electronic document preparation systems. Customers may lose confidence in the electronic document preparation systems. Furthermore, customers may simply decide to utilize less expensive options for preparing their taxes, as one example. Further, vast amounts of computing resources are consumed with determining inaccurate tax return data which is then provided to and processed by other entities, such as government entities, i.e. the Internal Revenue Service.
These issues and drawbacks are not limited to electronic tax return preparation systems. Any electronic document preparation system that assists users to electronically fill out forms or prepare documents suffers from these same inaccuracies and drawbacks when the physical forms relating to the electronic forms are created or updated. The inability for electronic systems to quickly and effectively update electronic document fields and their relationships to each other based on the text instructions associated with the new and updated forms is a longstanding technical problem.